Under pillow and insults I bounced to my feet, filled for a moment with quite real wrath; he lay back, roaring with laughter, and my anger was swept away.

“Doc,” he said, very seriously, after this, “I know who the Three are!”

“Yes?” I queried, with studied sarcasm.

“Yes?” he mimicked. “Yes! Ye⁠—ye⁠—” He paused under the menace of my look, grinned. “Yes, I know,” he continued. “They’re of the Tuatha Dé, the old ones, the great people of Ireland, that’s who they are!”

I knew, of course, of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the tribes of the god Danu, the half-legendary, half-historical clan who found their home in Erin some four thousand years before the Christian era, and who have left so deep an impress upon the Celtic mind and its myths.